Banking/Finance

Most of America’s media think President Obama's 2009 bailout of General Motors and Chrysler was a huge success. Former Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank threw cold water on this meme on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday correctly informing viewers that the auto bailout lost money for the federal government. By contrast, we made money from George W. Bush's 2008 bank bailout (video…

I guess we should acknowledge a tiny improvement when an ordinarily in-the-tank apparatchik like Jim Kuhnhenn at the Associated Press expresses even the slightest bit of skepticism about a White House claim. But let's not take it too far. Kuhnhenn is reporting in a brief "Big Story" item this morning that President Obama "is laying claim to an economic turnaround and warning Republicans not…

If we're to believe Tom Raum's Friday afternoon report at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, the economy is humming along smoothly enough that we really shouldn't think about it that much any more, especially as something to consider when voting. And besides, it's being "eclipsed" by "other pressing events." I'll stay away from those other "events" in the interest of…

There are two key words missing from the report Bloomberg's Kasia Klimasinska & Shobhana Chandra published Tuesday morning — a writeup that is so incredibly sunny and over-the-top that is probably would have embarrassed the Old Soviet Union's Pravda in its heyday. One is "income." The reason is obvious. Real median household income is still way below where it was when the recession ended…

A November 15, 2010 blog post by Michael S. Derby at the Wall Street Journal ("San Francisco Fed Official Says QE2 Is Working") told us that "The Federal Reserve‘s recently announced plan to buy $600 billion in Treasury securities to improve economic growth is having a positive effect on growth." The Fed official involved also predicted "the U.S. gross domestic product to come in at 2.5% this…

As members of America’s news media fail to recognize that Detroit went bankrupt due to decades of Democratic Party rule, they’ll probably execute the same protocol when they cover Illinois’ pension fiasco, which happens to be the worst in the country. In fact, it’s so bad that the Illinois Comptroller has told legislators that they won’t be paid until this matter is resolved. Democratic…

Today, as the wire service AFP reported in a story carried at Yahoo.com, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in the question and answer exchange after his prepared testimony, told the House Financial Services Committee that "If we were to tighten (monetary) policy, the economy would tank." That assessment of the economy's fragility qualifies as news, especially given the Obama…

Well, it’s Washington Post official: the sequestration wasn’t all that bad after all.  In fact, you could classify it as a dud, according to none other than Ezra Klein, a favored pet pundit of many a liberal MSNBC panel. In a June 30 item at his Wonkblog, Klein concluded that the experts were “mostly wrong” concerning the impact of the cuts.  At the same time, conservatives saw from the…

On Tuesday June 25, Penny Pritzker became the 38th Secretary of Commerce after the Senate voted to confirm her 97-1.  Oddly enough, Pritzker has a Romney-esque business background.  The well-connected friend of Obama is worth millions, has previously understated her income, and is not well liked by Big Labor.  She also benefited from offshore tax havens. Despite all that, in the end, her…

Apparently, three movies attacking Wall Street wasn’t enough. Hollywood’s made another anti-capitalist film to be released November 15. The biopic of former Wall Street stockbroker, Jordan Belfort, who is also a conman, stars known liberal actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The “Titanic” star is a well-known environmental activist and has donated more than $40,000 to Obama’s two presidential campaigns…

This isn’t anything new.  The Obama administration pays its female staff thousands of dollars less than their male ones.  So, why hasn’t the press called him out on it?  Save for a few publications, like the Daily Mail out of London, there has yet to be a concerted effort on behalf of the news media to ask Obama about this overt hypocrisy. All of the White House salaries are released to the…

Banks are bad because they make a profit on things requested by their customers, according to both NBC and CBS. The two networks highlighted a study released June 11 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [CFPB] that said banks made $12.6 billion in overdraft fees and non-sufficient funds from bounced checks in 2011. Though only 20 percent of customers actually opt-in for overdraft…

It was only two days ago that one of Charlie Rose’s guests, Politico’s Jim VandeHei, celebrated the disappearance of many outspoken Republicans from the political scene. On last night’s show, Rose invited on a pair of brash Democrats who vanished from Congress recently: former Sen. Chris Dodd and former Rep. Barney Frank. The former lawmakers were there to discuss the 2010 financial…

On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, John Dickerson spun a front page scoop from the Washington Post that spotlighted the several private meetings that a top Obama health care adviser had with investment firms on the future implementation of ObamaCare: "It's a little hard to see what those investment firms got that wasn't already publicly available." The liberal CBS political director brushed…